Miel de Maple

Yesterday, and for just an instant, I felt like the happiest man on Earth. No fancy triggers or spectacular experiences: I was just having lunch.

I then wondered if every man is once in a lifetime “the happiest man on Earth”, even if it’s only for a mili-second. Odds are 1 to billions so I guess not. Despite the stats, I believe that the feeling can be easily and repeatedly experienced if you slow down for a second and focus on the joy and pleasure small things can bring.

A slip of Coke, a gold-lighted afternoon, free ice-cream or a slow kiss can be just enough to make you feel the happiest man (or girl) on Earth.

Just found that UK-based Jammy Toast Podcast, in their Episode 18, featured a song of my friend Rubinskee (Iván Riestra) along with a song of my last release (Living Undercover).

The podcast really worths a look at. It makes an amazing selection electronic music published under creative-commons licenses and other copyright-safe agreements.

Cheers to Pete, the hilarious host of this wonderful podcast!

Now everybody is worried about being ‘eco-friendy’, ‘organic’, ’sustainable’ or, at least, ’energy efficient ‘. “Organic cotton fabrics” in jeans  and coffee packaged in recycled paper remind me two things: that Earth might be threatening our survival after a few hundred years of thoughtless living and more importantly, that ‘green-friendly’ stuff can produce broader margins of added value.

You can be ‘hip’ and green by drinking Starbuck’s coffee, driving an hybrid car or applying yourself all-organic and natural make-up which is expensive. But you can still be green without spending and help improve the quality of life of a bunch of people that doesn’t exist yet.

These are 4 small things I’ve done:

• Use public transportation instead of driving: use the extra time to read, think or meet your life’s love.
• Turn off  lights or electronic devices you are not using. Even better if you unplug them!
• Print on both sides of paper. Extra points for printing two pages per sheet.
• Plant a tree or take care of a plant. Besides, a plant in your house can add a nice touch to it.

Anyway, do whatever you feel to. With us or without, Earth is still gonna spin for a while.

It was the calm Sunday night of a thrilling weekend when my best friend said: we can have italian or we can meet these place called Ihop, US-like stuff.

I was really hungry so I told him: ‘Ihop’. Also the best answer to the question: where you should have dinner in order to feel a bothersome fullness, uncomfortable  enought to keep you awake until 4am?

We had a giant hamburger and enough fries and Coca-Cola to supply the daily caloric intake of four sailors.

I didn’t mind until bedtime when I started  feeling  a half-soul / half-physical discomfort.  I then remembered Thomas Hobbes saying:

“…cold doth in the same manner generate fear in those that sleep, and causeth them to dream of ghosts, and to have phantasms of horror and danger.”

My advice? Believe English philosophers  and your parents when they say you will have a  ’disturbed repose’ if you eat tons of food before bedtime.

Not so long ago, in a moment of distress, someone told me: ‘Don’t Give Up’. Like in so many movies, songs or self-improvement books, but it didn’t sound like bullshit then. I cooked for her one afternoon, because those words were helpful and because I sometimes forgot about them.

The phrase doesn’t look like  such a big deal, but this Friday remembered me it can make a difference. After all, success is more about hard work than sole virtuosity and more about taking action rather than just thinking.

Don’t let a big or long challenge knock you out. Never disqualify yourself. Don’t expect you will fail.

You can eat an elephant, one bite at a time. So Debug, Re-Execute and Never Give Up.

I’ll stop now before this start sounding too much like self-help literature and I feel nauseated.

Are you aware of what kind of information is displayed when you type your email, most frequent internet user-name or your meat-life name on Google?

It could range from the fancy results of your top-edge scientific research on a new intellectual framework for psychiatry, but it could also include some nasty information like: your brainy speeches at your favorite forum, the grades your teacher published in his personal page, YouTube’s comments, or social network websites with your photographs along with tons more of information.

Not long ago, a friend of mine typed in Google the e-mail address of someone we met just to find out  an incommensurable amount of forum threads detailing the entire experience of her termination of pregnancy: questions, answers, microscopic details… Believe me or not, we were just trying to find if she had previously released some interesting achievements in the software industry.

Nothing happened really for me, I just thought: “I didn’t knew it, but it doesn’t matter to me either. That’s the sort of problems you could  face during high-school.”

But now, it’s not just your most curiosity-driven friends at college that could search for you in Google. It could be your employer, a person who feels attracted to you or even your parents.

Go ahead, type your name, common user-names or emails and find out what kind of information is out there. Delete it, edit it or use a different identity when posting information that could be used against you in your upcoming political career.

Once upon a time, in a long past age, the Delphic Oracle was the most prestigious and authorative oracle in the world. It has been ages since then and as Heraclitus once noted: “there is nothing permanent except change”. Nowadays, the title of the definitive oracle is claimed  by the mighty internet search engine, Google.

It’s present everywhere at the same time and it’s looking forward to know all things which can be known, past, present and future.  It is capable to respond your most deep and concerning questions like: How can I get rid of the plague that threatens my city? Should I marry her? Do bugs have emotions?

And it’s almost sure it knows something about you.

Hey! Glad to see you.
Just wanted to suggest some great albums and share the pleasure they have given me.

Ulver: Perdition City.

It was an everyday afternoon in high-school. A friend of mine took his discman out of his knap-sack and said: listen to this, I think you are gonna like it. He put the first track and in a few seconds, there was something inside me saying: I’ve been waiting 16 years to hear something like this.

Perdition City is the fifth studio LP of the norwegian band Ulver. Its themes are passionate, full of  melancholy and their development, intelligent and fierce. The ultra high-frequency textures across the entire album will make you remember Pierre Henry, but along with a lot of cool synths, beats, clicks, cuts and an audacious digital production you can hear the drums, distort and lyrics of a true rock band.

A deep and  cinematographic experience with every listening.

Steve Jansen: Slope

Jansen’s first album is simply wonderful. So carefully produced, and able to arouse such intense feelings, that I’m sure David Sylvian is, again, jealous of his baby brother.

It’s something difficult to describe. It sounds like ambient, prog and experimental electronica mixed with delicate vocals and contemporary arrangements.

The mood of the album is a strange feeling between happiness and nostalgia, perhaps like crying when remembering something wonderful that is gone. 

Something to listen carefully on a quiet afternoon.

During this week (and thanks to a logistic miscalculation of my airline), I had the chance to visit, for the second time, the city of Monterrey and its superb Contemporary Art Museum (AKA MARCO).

MARCO “targets on promoting  international contemporary art with a particular bent towards Latin American visual arts” and is, by itself, an impressive work of art designed by the Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta.

The current exhibitions feature the oneiric work of mexican painter, María Izquierdo, and a vast retrospective of  English sculptor, Antony Gormley.  

Gormley’s work is a serious thought about the body and its relationship with its environment wrapped in a playful and spectacular way. Definitely, a must during this winter season.

If you live in the city or if you are lucky enough to visit Machaca’s potentially birthplace, pay a visit to this exhibition held until March 2009. Hurry up!

New Year’s Eve is around the corner and everyone is thinking on new resolutions and big plans: change is the keyword of the week. But don’t see change as a phenomena that is exclusive to December 31. Life is a continuos and unstoppable movement. Life itself is a never ending change, so re-make / re-model yourself whenever you feel to and as often as needed. 

To conclude this post and this year, I prepared a list of  ”suggestions” for this 2009. I think they can (at least superficially) make you feel happier or better.

• Be confident.
  Men have a natural tendency to mortify and demean the insecure. Besides, girls can smell your fear and they don’t find it sexy. 
   
• Don’t get upset.
  Stop getting mad because of traffic, dumb people or other trivialities. It’s useless.
    
• Live more, think less.
  There are things that need to be carefully though or calculated. Other things, like kissing a girl, just require the opposite. Don’t think so much you forget to live.
   
• Add a touch of creativity and style to your dress.
  I don’t care if you study some kind of engineering or science, t-shirts, baggy jeans and basketball shoes make an unfortunate combination.
   
• Self-discipline.
  You are not going to loose weight if you don’t change your taco-based diet. Your school grades are not going to improve if you don’t study more. Make a plan and work hard to get what you want.